My Farewell to Arms

I stood on the steel staircase landing and looked out over the river, which had seemed impossibly big when I first saw it. The brackish, heavy air stirred around me and carried with it the scents of heat, of humidity, of mud and gently decomposing vegetation. It was, for me, the smell of the Corps.

A trivial errand had brought me to DMO, which stands for "Distribution Management Office." It was one of those ever-changing acronyms in the Marine Corps--it had been TMO, or "Traffic Management Office" for as long as I could remember. It had the same function now as it did before, which was taking your military orders and translating them into a government contract for a moving company, so you could be moved as painlessly as possible. Perhaps at one time it was staffed by Marines, and moderately efficient. Now it was staffed mostly by civilians, which I viewed with a healthy distrust. Most, I'm sure, were diligent and hard-working...but the Marine spouse who I'd spoken to earlier, and who set up my move, had received me like a bad cold and lectured me in a voice both whiny and severe about the limitations of my particular move.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my check-out sheet--on which I was required to get her signature--when I had first seen her, which meant today's trip to this dilapidated brick building. The steel staircase felt like a patch, added recently to cover some defect in the original building. An apt metaphor for DMO itself: a sad, uneasy hybrid of the Marine Corps and the vast, suffocating apparatus of support that grows like fungus on the military organization.

The first time I saw the river, I stood on sweltering asphalt outside Bobo Hall. I had just stuffed some 1500 calories in my face while Drill Instructors screamed and strutted all around me. Terrified of their attention, I bolted my food and ran outside to the comparative safety of my place in formation and my "knowledge," the little read handbook I had to read in every spare moment not occupied by instruction. As I meditated intently on Lieutenant Bobo, who to cover the retreat of his Marines had jammed the severed stump of his leg into the dirt of Vietnam to stop the bleeding, and who won the medal of honor for it, I noticed that this "river" flowing past was tremendously wide. Wider than the Columbia River, by far. Nearly as wide as Lake Washington.

The pungency of the air contained many memories. There is a particular smell to Virginia--maybe just to Quantico--that is known to every Marine Corps officer. A smell that reminds of early mornings and aching chests after a run, or the slimy cool of the Quigley, or the itch and suppression of a flak jacket, vest, and pack in the treeline. It reminds of Drill Instructors with massive arms and veins popping out all over their neck and face as they scream, of taciturn Captains exuding contempt and disappointment at another failed attack, of the heavy numbness of pack and rifle and road and the back of the Marine in front of you, which sets in and carries you through the hours of a forced march.

The overwhelming feeling of being yanked back to the very beginning, of returning to where it all started, is gone. I am back in my car, and irritably searching for a parking spot near the IPAC (Installation Personnel Administration Center, a sweatshop of administration Marines struggling to handle all the administration problems of tens of thousands of other Marines assigned to Quantico). In the back of my mind, I'm wondering what other memories I've buried.

I'm trying to control my astonished wonder at the ghostly green nearness of the mountains. They slide by, fast and deadly, invisible unless I swing my goggles at them. Then they are dangerously close. But I'm conscious that it is my friend in the other jet, struggling to earn his qualification, and we need these attacks to go well. So I drop my gaze under my goggles, watching the displays. Weapons page, set. HUD to the left DDI. I glance to my left and see the other aircraft zip through two small mounds, level with us. I frown. I know we, the wingman, are supposed to stay above our lead for safety. But my pilot is also the flight evaluator, an experienced and outstanding pilot. I wonder, as I nervously flick my eyes between the HUD, the approaching desert floor, and the lead aircraft slowly rising above us, if my pilot is maneuvering to look at something, or to test the other aircraft, or simply is holding a more disciplined altitude than the relatively inexperienced lead. Am I imagining, or is the ground getting closer? How close are we? Wait, I can't tell. The altimeter says 2,160 feet. Without thinking I say, "RADALT to the HUD." Suddenly G-forces come on, and we angle upwards. The RADALT alarm sounds our proximity to the ground as the pilot adjusts it. The altimeter, showing 2,230, instantly shows 240. There's an instant of nausea, as I marvel that we were flying less than 300 feet above the deck with absolutely none of the safety precautions in place to a collision with the ground, if for but a few seconds we fail to pay attention. Then I realize we're coming up on the target, and I hurriedly bring up the Litening Pod display on the right. Over the ICS, I hear my pilot say, "RADALT to the HUD. Thanks."

I joined the Marine Corps chiefly to be free of my parents' financial support. But a latent streak of romantic adventurism awakened as I arrived on that hot, humid asphalt in the summer of 2003. There was the icy, nauseating fear of the drill instructors, but also this strange exhilaration in the company of my fellow candidates. We were doing great things, in our own way--hiking distances, and performing tasks, and learning things that only days before had been unimaginable. And the sea stories of the prior-enlisted, or the drill instructors (delivered in the form of harsh instruction) made me hunger to travel and take this wonderful, small world of right and wrong, good and bad, of exertion and mission to exotic places. There was the middle east, where the battle of An Nasiriyah had concluded. There were stories of the DMZ in Korea, the Central Training Area of Okinawa, and rumors of Afghanistan. There was more heat in Camp Lejeune, and mountains in Camp Pendleton, and I wanted to see it all. I was in love--and I have remained so until the very end.

One thing true of Marines everywhere is their consciousness of history and tradition, from leathernecks to cake ceremonies, Belleau Wood to Frozen Chosin, and always the revered names of our antecedents like Bobo and Barnum and Chesty. Marines, when prompted, will talk for hours on the lineage of the "blood stripe" on their trousers or the origin of the phrase "Gee-Dunk." I know all the old histories, too, and will no doubt repeat them more often as an veteran than I ever did as a Marine Officer. But I think the real well-spring and deposit of tradition lies in the time-honored Marine institutions that remain, virtually unchanged, into our modern times.

I shivered. The biting wind mocked both the desert-pattern windbreaker I wore as a "warming layer" and the magnificent desert mountains rearing all around. It was just before dawn, and the sky was beginning to lighten behind the ridges. Twenty-five yards in front of me, a row of man-shaped targets quivered, and between them and me strutted the campaign-covered marksmanship instructors. We waited for the sunrise, which promised warmth and would allow us to begin shooting. I wasn't looking forward, however, because there was something oddly familiar about this situation. It wasn't deja vu, but something more like finally seeing a building you've only before seen in pictures. I recognized this.

Then suddenly I remembered. E. B. Sledge had been here, had described it in his World War II memoir With the Old Breed. He had described this whole institution: the unspoken expectation of marksmanship, the cold, the weapons, the instructors, the targets, the pits. He might have been to this range, actually, for he described the remote Camp Eliot which still existed, a mountainous wilderness of hiking trails now sitting under the approach path to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. Before the modern Marine Corps, before helicopter flight, before Iwo Jima and his own battles of Peleliu and Okinawa, before and Khe Sanh and "The March Up" in 1991, Private Sledge had qualified on the timeless ranges of the Marine Corps. Just as I was doing.

A study of history, too, shows that this legacy runs further back than 1942. The two regiments of Marines who went to France in 1918 were reluctantly included by the Army because Congress knew they were already basically qualified soldiers--they had essential marksmanship training, essential training that was reduced for the Army's conscripts in order to more quickly field combat units. It's likely that the Marine doughboys of Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood knelt on the same hard ground with their Springfield rifles, re-fought their grandfather's civil war battles just as today's Marines re-fight Vietnam and the early battles of the long war in the Middle East.

The general rubbed his hands briefly together in a nervous gesture that could have been his transition to a new topic, a physical equivalent to saying, "um." But I detected some glee in the movement, and so readied myself for a joke. And I was not disappointed. "When I was a young Lieutenant in the late seventies," he began, "my platoon lived up in Camp Margarita on Pendleton. And we lived in these really crappy barracks. There was a single squad bay, with a partition at one end for me and my platoon sergeant's desks. It was crumbling and dirty, no matter how many times we field day'd the place, and the showers were always backed up and the toilets never worked. And being a conscientious and enterprising lieutenant, I filled out the chit every Friday specifying the discrepancies and requesting maintenance to come to fix the plumbing. One day, as I was dropping the chit off in the Facilities section, the gunny who was there said, 'hey wait a minute, Lieutenant.' I turned back and said, 'yes, gunny?' He motioned me close--" the general made a comical beckoning motion--"and said, 'now I like you, Lieutenant. You seem like you're really trying to do the right thing here. But I gotta say, those barracks you're living in are condemned. They're scheduled to be replaced in the next five years, so nobody's going to spend any money to fix them at all.' And he pointed to a drawer, where I could see every chit I'd ever written neatly filed." The general paused as an appreciative chuckle swept through the Lieutenants. "Well, I went back and continued writing my chits, but I was a little satisfied to know that there would be new buildings soon." He paused for a second. "Fast forward to the early two thousands, when I became the CG of 1st Marine Division. Shortly after I arrived back on Camp Pendleton, I drove up to Camp Margarita to see the new barracks. By then I was wise enough not to be surprised when I saw the same old crappy, crumbling barracks standing there." A muted laugh from the audience. "But I parked my car and headed into the same old squad bay to find a Lieutenant sitting at the same desk behind the same partition, doing some paperwork. He jumped up quick when he saw mygeneral's star, but I calmed him down--" another muted laugh--"and asked him how the Barracks were. 'Well, sir,' he replied, "the toilets don't work and the showers are always backed up! I write a chit every Friday after field day, but I'm told...'" Here the general paused for dramatic effect, with the air of an impending punch line, "'that these buildings are scheduled to be torn down in five years and new ones built in their spot!'" The laughter was loud and long.

The amazing thing about the Marine Corps is this vital continuity of experience, the feeling of being part of something meaningful, with roots in the past and a mission for the future. Generations of Marines have field day'd crumbling buildings and ships, and written chits that were ignored, and felt the lash of a salty, scornful, authoritative tongue on their sincere efforts. Generations of officers have struggled to care for their Marines who are coping with substandard living conditions, and have with secret pride rejoiced in the Corps' preference to spend money on training rounds and field rations rather than cushy barracks with serviceable plumbing. The great work of the Marine Corps, to win battles and make good citizens, continues in the small details and virtues that are comical, and ridiculous, and the very lifeblood of the military.

In the gathering darkness I watched them line up in the LZ. The shouts and complaints, audible in the still air, told of their exhaustion. Steam rose from their necks and faces, and I shivered. Forcing myself to be still, despite the lack of warming layers (which I had conspicuously stripped), I waited until the student platoon commander told me they were ready "to step." Hoisting my pack smoothly I took my spot at the front left of the column, and started walking.

By now it was dark, and large flakes of snow were falling. I could feel their despair behind me. Despair is not too strong a word, because after their first wake-up-and-full day-of attacks in the field, they were beat down. Bad. I knew how they felt--the sweat, clammy and gritty with dirt but now freezing, the shaky legs and ankles, sore from walking up and down and alongside hills all day. It didn't help that I was marching them past their quarters in Graves Hall, whose windows shone with warm light. There was despair dragging behind me as the dark closed in, and the sad and terrible finality of falling snow extinguished any hope of warmth and light. I had been through it all before, and I knew why ancient people worshipped the sun.

But the despair was born of fear, and baseless fear at that. Soon, I knew, we would arrive at our next LZ, and the snow would keep our sleeping bags dry in the freezing air. I knew we soon would be happily bivouacked. And so I strode remoselessly on, swinging off the paved road on to gravel. Here the carefully constructed model officer I projected to the world fell apart, for I tripped on a pothole and face-planted, with 80-odd pounds of pack helping to drive the point home. Almost immediately, the students had picked me up and were asking if I was okay. I growled at them a thanks and continued to stride, angry and embarrassed but otherwise unhurt. After several paces I commented to my student platoon commander that at least I gave them something to use against me at Mess Night.

We tramped across the wooden bridge, and climbed raggedly up Cardiac Hill. As I strode away from the top, I heard murmurings behind me that swelled, slowly, until someone finally yelled, "stop!" I stopped, turned around, and asked who had fallen back. The students, in huddled postures, told me the name of the two Marines who hadn't kept up, and again I felt their despair clutching at me. The night was cold, the woods were close, and two of their peers were lost somewhere behind. Angry at their weakness, I told my student platoon commander to keep the platoon there, and I took a squad leader with me back down the hill. Eventually I found my Marines, struggling and slow, morale as bad as I'd ever seen. They were uninjured, however, so I told them to continue after us and I walked back to the main group.

Some packs were off, the quintessential expression of defeat for students. I ignored the questioning (pleading?) glances, took my place at the head of the column, and began walking. There was a sullen scramble behind me to pick up and begin again. But it was easy going from here, as the road was flat, and soon we'd turned in the treeline.  The slow Marines had caught up. The trail endd at another LZ, where there were other platoons and some vehicles, engines humming comfortably. I had my students take off their packs and sit on them, and talked briefly about the next day's event. Then I let them go make up their sleeping positions. Before lying down, I checked in with my firewatch Marines and chatted briefly with the Marines who were still awake.

From my sleeping bag, slowly warming up with my body's heat, I finally appreciated the beauty and the stillness of snow, delicately outlining every branch and quieting the world. After that night, I never felt any fear or despair in my Marines, and I hoped they learned the lesson: with a Mission to accomplish, and Marines to lead, they can get through anything--or rather, certainly through harder trials than a snowy night hike.

For nearly nine years (thirteen if you count my time in ROTC, which most don't, but which seemed quite military to me at the time) I have loved and served this institution. I have shivered in wet foxholes, and soaked in coffee to stay awake through the small hours while preparing some report or another. I have honed my skills at air-to-air combat and close air support in readiness for conflict, used some of the same Quonset Huts at Iwakuni as the Marines who occupied Japan in 1945. I have suffered the disappointment of my peers and superiors and (worst of all) my Marines, and have taken joy in our shared successes, and I have grown up. Grown to know that I could truly give to a marriage, truly give to my children, truly face danger and difficulty and uncertainty and yet do something constructive.

I have many sea stories to tell and re-tell in nostalgic moments to come. The Naval Service still holds sway over my heart and the thrill of new, dangerous places is only a memory away. But I have found a greater love in my wife and child, and a hitherto unknown desire for peace and quietude. So it is time to hang up my uniform. I taste, one last time, that particular air of the Marine Corps: brackish water and effort and heat and the joyful burden of scrutiny and responsibility. I look out at that river which started it all, the strange brown river as big as a lake and a visible sign that home was far away and I was, then, somewhere completely different. It was exciting, terribly exciting, and I followed that excitement a lover.

But now, with happy memories, it is time to go home.

Semper Fidelis.

Springtime and Her

It was a magnificent afternoon.

I was freed early from work for a meeting on Mainside with the eternally frustrating IPAC, which is the Installation Personnel Administration Center and commonly experienced as a particular circle of hell in which one's dearest personal information is subjected to the worst bureaucratic treatment by apathetic Marines with no connection to you or your unit, and therefore no motivation or mutually shared esprit to look after you, and where consequently your pay, or orders, or personnel file are treated as nasty intrusive garbage and whose maintenance is a barely tolerable chore.

Fortunately there is a civilian who works there, soft-spoken and incongruously muscular, whose professional sneer conceals a real desire to help out the poor patients who dare enter that sanctuary.

A short stop later to receive a 'counseling' on my pending move, where I was warned in no uncertain terms that I might expect out-of-pocket expenses during my move to Wisconsin, since my home of record is in Bellevue, Washington, and told severely that this was the last move at government expense that I would ever have, which is sort of the point of leaving this Marine Corps anyway, isn't it?

But nevertheless I walked out of there with the promise of movers calling shortly to arrange a date for picking up my stuff at the unusual hour of 2:35 in the afternoon (1435 to those military types). And behold! the sun was shining with the richness of spring down on the wintry world, where the temperature grudgingly lifted itself up above 40 degrees and an inexplicable, delightfully warm breeze cooed among the shriveled boughs.

I drove home on roads crowded, but with little slowing. I listened to some re-discovered and favorite music, happily singing along (a little off-key, as is my wont) and letting the sentiments of the songs wash over me. I and greeted my ecstatic dogs in a sunlit house, for the first time I can remember (though I know objectively it's happened before). A happy mood was upon me, a mood which promised something great. A moment of pure happiness--especially because I had something to accomplish, and so I cheerfully bent to work on a self-imposed 'honey-do' list.

I should note here that my wife is wonderfully competent, and asks very little of me around the house. She will happily paint walls over and over again until she finds the perfect palette of complimenting colors; she tidies up repeatedly after our daughter (and, shamefully, me on occasion) with a ready hand; she steams and scrubs the floors and changes light bulbs and does laundry and generally applies all the ingenuity and dedication she brought so successfully to Television Production to our home. She also lovingly rears our daughter and freelance writes on the side, I might add. Only a very few tasks are left to me--take out the garbage (which she does as well), perhaps, and remove the dead mice from our basement. You might say I am not strictly necessary in a domestic sense.

But as she is currently doing all of that stuff in our wonderful NEW house in Wisconsin, preparing it with her customary industry for our arrival after the move I have just arranged, there are a few things I can do for her. And while such tasks may not be the 'something great' that our collective consciousness has in mind on a sunny day, well, I can say that they are something much greater than I ever did before her. My wife, see, loves a clean house. And I can really give her that today. It is wonderful to clean crusted dog excrement off the odd rug, clean dead mice and their excrement out of the basement, run a few loads of laundry, scrub the floors of the sticky remains of toddler snacks, and air out the house. It's a honey-do list I made, for her. A way to give back to her what she gives to me every day. It's small, but joyful, and it is the metaphorical cherry on top of this day. I can't wait for her to see everything--not so she will comment (though she inevitably will, and with loving gratitude), but so she'll enjoy it. So she'll be able to relax when she arrives and not feel the need to clean, or tidy, or avert her attention from a pressing mess that's just too hard to clean with a curious toddler running around.

Later that evening I pay an all-too-rare visit to the Sacrament in my church. Incense sits heavily upon the pews with the other worshippers, all conspicuously ordinary yet distinct, comfortably anonymous in the dimness and their private prayers. Their normality emphasizes their focus on the monstrance on the altar, and I slide almost effortlessly into a spiritual communion that I can never seem to achieve anywhere else.

Then in the quiet warmth of our house, I make myself dinner. I'm a bachelor with very specific tastes on a night like this, so I indulge not in ramen or a frozen pizza but in eggs, bacon, and cereal. There are tidbits for the dogs, who happily interrupt naps to come and politely beg (mostly by staring longingly with ever the slightest look of accusation at my feast), but when I finally pull away from my book and clean my dishes, I'm struck by how odd it feels without her.

It feels odd because I should be content. Food, comfort, a good book, a feeling spiritual wellness, a sense of accomplishment--I have all I should ever need for happiness. But my heart is restless. My inner St. Augustine rears his head. I know for whom I cry. It is her. My companion. Her sudden smile, her startling plunges into meaningful conversation, her thoughts on the day, the news, the kid, the food, the everything. All that I achieved this day is meaningless except for the clean rugs slowly steaming on the living room floor, with the thermostat set to eighty degrees, and the clean basement for laundry.

And I want to be with her.

I want to drop this magnificent day and barrel into the single-digit, blustery winter of Wisconsin, just to order her a glass of chardonnay at the nearest supper club (or dive bar), to laugh about the singular pleasure of seat-heaters in the car which somehow manage to warm you deeply even while most of your body shivers, to pick out the most unlikeable person in the bar and befriend them instantly (well, she does that. I just tag along).

But she is with a friend tonight, a rare opportunity to see a friend when they are both in the Midwest at the same time. She'd never want me absent, never consider me a third wheel, but I'm secretly glad she has this night to enjoy free from the needs of our new home, or our old home, or anything else. So that she can have something like my afternoon, hopefully with nothing to accomplish but the gladness that comes with renewing an old friendship.

And I will happily keep the light on here, literally and metaphorically. And hope she notices the basement when she gets home.

On Country Music and "American" Values

I grew up in an environment very hostile to Country music. Seattle, Washington is known as the cradle of Grunge and maintains today, 15 years after the fact, an "alternative" music identity. I spent my formative college years at Notre Dame, which is mostly stocked with bluff midwestern Catholics and rich northeast Catholics who between them enjoyed a combination of hard rock, punk, and the occasional indulgence in pop music or hip-hop when it came down to dorm parties. My tastes then were nursed on a certain amount of assumed condescension toward Country music--it was, as my friends intimated to me on more than one occasion, the sound of a backwards, conservative, probably bigoted and ultimately embarrassing segment of America. And though I lived my next three years in the South, I maintained this attitude toward country music even if I found that land filled with good people and good values (both of which I miss to this day). It wasn't until I got to California that I suddenly found myself--very surprisingly--craving Country. Clearly, some unconscious comparison between the two disparate pieces of America thrust the issue into focus for me.

There is no doubt that Country music has become more popular of late. I even hear some Country songs on pop radio stations, which is of course appropriate because the odd Country music song (usually sung by an attractive young lady) will break into the mainstream Top 4o. Thus, I am clearly not the only one who is converting to a previously despised genre. Why? I think the reason for this is simple and often overlooked: Country music evokes the image of a happier, simpler time wherein we individually valued rightness over success and could therefore collectively be prouder of ourselves and our society.

The distinction between rightness and success as sources of happiness is one that resonates deeply with me, both because of my religion and (I'll argue) because of our collective understanding of "American Values." It isn't for nothing that the midwest and the south, where people live their lives in contempt of the cosmopolitan coasts and adhere to more ancient values and tradetions, are regarded as the repository of American culture--or at least when it comes to rugged individualism and the frontier ideal. We tend to regard the "settlers" and entrepreneurs who founded and built the states west of the Appalacians and south of the Mason-Dixon Line (excluding most of the West Coast) with idealism: these were the men and women who made something out of nothing; these were the men and women who raised our nation; these were the the people who valued independence, diligence, respect, and love; these were the salt of the earth. Yet that unconscious comparison that triggered my sudden, delicious, descent into Country music was the obvious fact that the people of the south apparent conformed to those idealized values with their own lives.

During my residence in the south I was surprised to see how kind, capable, friendly and even happy the general population was. Everywhere I found southerners from toddlers to great-grandparents acting respectful, respectful, sociable, and pleasantly independent (by which I mean they weren't needy). Near as I could make out, this was due to their lack of pretension. They could enjoy their surroundings without concerning themselves with the presence or attitudes of others. It felt overwhelmingly right and comfortable to me--I was in the curious position of feeling the need to be polite and yet also feeling no burden to be a certain person. Perhaps that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but for all that it is no less true. After all, politeness is simply, well, polite, and has very little to do with the values and perspectives that make up a character.

This lifestyle became suddenly much more noticeable by it's absence in San Diego. The cliche states that Southern California is mostly about image and style--and I'm afraid to say that it's both true and quite painfully obvious in the general unfriendliness of people. Often they are downright rude to each other, especially in restaurants and cafes, on the road, or when assuming a horrible condescending attitude toward waiters and retail clerks. Despite the fantastic weather, stunning scenery, and beautiful people, it was harder to stay happy in San Diego than it was in the rural and humid south for the simple reason that I had to deal with Southern Californians.

This is, of course, a very generalized comparison. There certainly are selfish and pretentious people in the south and kind and sociable people who live in Southern California (some of whom I met shortly after moving there, actually). However, based on the overall quality of society in both places, I would choose the South every time. I instinctively feel that it is easier to be a good man in the South than it is in California. There people's lives recall and present the kind of good, principled men and women who founded, developed, and succored our nation. We remember with pride our struggle for independence from England, our difficult settlement of the West, the idealism and honor on both sides of the Civil War, our conduct in both World Wars, our economic and social invincibility during the 1950s, and our victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Our collective national identity values good Americans for the sake of what they have given us. Such Americans are more explicitly remembered and emulated in the South than in California. They are the characters of Country music and their stories form the themes of the genre.

In addition to enshrining our cherished and idealized memories, Country music also exhorts us morally. It is the most visible media in America that generally suggests the right and good are better than success. The values of country music are traditional and unassailable, and include trust, honesty, commitment, freedom, sacrifice within relationships and for one's country, the intrinsic value of family and religion, and romance. Country music encourages these values, teaching us that happiness is not found in more things, or more status, or in hedonism; it is found in love and dedication and self-respect. And perhaps most refreshingly of all, Country music doesn't proselytize directly but expresses itself entertainingly in stories and ballads. Contrary to the opinion I was raised to hold, Country music is certainly not depressing but rather enjoyable and occasionally stirring. Maybe it's increased popularity is an expression of our collective awareness that such values and ideals are, in fact, valuable, and that they are slowly disappearing.

It is a pity that as a society we idolize Southern California so much. The main theme of our mainstream media (Movies, songs, and TV shows) seems to be success--getting the good relationship, getting the good life, and getting the best of others. More artistic media changes things up by lamenting how hard it is to get those things and often pillories an oppressive external agency. By presenting money, success, ideal relationships, and sex as our rights, pop music supports narcissism and indirectly criticizes those who don't have such things; by presenting bitterness and anger as natural responses to one's lack of happiness, pop music encourages it's listeners to be bitter and angry. In an eloquent example of life imitating art, Southern Californians make an uneasy worship to hedonism, selfish ambition, bitterness, and narcissism. This is certainly a nihilistic approach to life--for selfishness is a hunger that can never be fully satisfied and bitterness a vaccine against all true contentment. The greater pity, however, is that so many Americans continue in contempt for perhaps the one segment of society whose majority has actually seen or found happiness.

What I discovered when I moved out of the South was that the simple, undeveloped, often dumpy south nurtured a culture of greater luminence than the "golden" West. And the art of Country music told the parables of Americanism and enshrined the "American" values that choke us up at the sound of "Taps" or stiffen our backs at the sight of Lincoln's Memorial. Such "American" values have carved for us a great place in the world. Inspired by these values, we have throughout our history reached out in solidarity to give our fellow citizens and other nations hope and freedom. These values are the source of our greatness. So I needed them--and especially their expression in Country music--when I encountered the cold and contracted spirit of Southern California. I almost never knew what I was missing.

Survival, a Wedding, and Reflections

Recently I graduated from API, which is the six-week academic indoctrination before Flight School. The acronym API, in fact, means "Aviation Preflight Indoctrination." It is heavily academic, and instructs students in the basics of aviation: how planes stay in the air, how engines work, how weather affects flying, basic navigation, and the like. Over the first four weeks, in fact, we have six tests, and failure could mean being dropped from the program. However, the final two weeks consist of survival training, and I have spent them parasailing and simulating ejections. I also took a road trip last weekend to Louisiana to help a good friend celebrate his wedding.

I learned early this past week that ejection is rather common in Military aviation, or at least more common than I thought. Apparently 1 in 5 military aviators eject, due no doubt to the relative age of our fighter and attack jets (25-40 years) and the extreme flight regimes we put them through. Because of this, two weeks are spent teaching us the ins-and-outs of parachuting and ejection, covering ejection at high altitude, parachute malfunctions (!), and ejection over land or sea.

First, we completed a parachute simulator event. It consists of a special virtual reality helmet that presents us with the sights of descending in a parachute while we hang in the harness. Via the helmet visuals, we are presented with common parachute malfunctions and are taught how to correct them - for example, if we have twisted paracords, we have to separate our rear risers (the rear straps connected to our harness) with our arms and bicycle kick to straighten everything out. If we do it right, the simulation reflects our success. It can be kind of funny to listen to students handle their particular problem ("Uh, I don't seem to have a parachute at all." "No, actually yours hasn't inflated. How do you correct for that again?"), but it is good training nonetheless.

Later, we got to go "redneck parasailing," which is basically parasailing behind a pickup truck in a field. Ironically, we do it in Alabama. We are attached to our parachute, then towed several hundred feet up into the air, and are released so we can practice landing correctly. Ideally, we land on the balls of our feet, then control our fall in such a way as to spread the force of hte impact on the side of our legs and spine, instead of absorbing it all with our feet and knees. It is basically a funny-looking controlled fall. The parasailing is of course very exilarating, but the landing was daunting - especially since the ground seemed to approach very quickly for all that I was wearing a parachute and all. I ended up hitting my head on the ground, but that was more embarrassing than anything else, and such scrapes were typical. Nobody got really hurt.

This weekend, a good friend of mine from TBS got married to his longstanding girlfriend in Bunkie, Louisiana. I drove the five hours out in my non-ejection seat car on Friday afternoon, and arrived in time for the rehearsal dinner. The wedding was Saturday, and was followed by a great reception. All the stereotypes about the "friendly and hospitable people of the south" are quite true - rarely have I met such friendly, happy, healthy-looking, and beautiful people as the two families I partied with. And I mean "party." They were eager to chat, unashamed to dance, and very disposed to drink. After the reception, we moved to the bar underneath the hotel we were staying at. This was a good idea until a drunkard attacked my friends sister, which nearly started a full-on, broken-bottle, 15-20 person bar brawl. Fortunately, the cops arrived before any punches were thrown, and the night turned out dramatic rather than painful. But even that was memorable and fun. The hometown crowd joked that we out-of-towners were getting exposed to a "real Louisiana wedding."

I remember well at TBS the great attachment I developed to the specific place of Quantico, Virginia and Washington, DC. For some reason, I tend to associate memories with places. One of the great themes in Catholic Philosophy (at least that I have studied) is that the world we live in nurtures us in faith and understanding. At Notre Dame I discovered what this meant by the rich beauty I found in the campus there, a result of both nature, such as sunsets over the dome, crisp golden autumn days, and new-fallen snow, and human investment, such as the striking and beautiful architecture of the campus and the careful land-scaping. In a way, my memories of events and people are localized in specific places, and I am surprised and lucky that I have found all those places beautiful. In fact, it is often the place itself that strikes me most positively during times of struggle, such as the hard schoolwork of Notre Dame or the tough physical training at TBS.

This all came back to me rather forcefully this weekend because almost every single Louisiana resident I met asked me if this was my first time in their state. They also asked (with more interest) whether I liked it there. I answered, truthfully, yes: there was no honest answer after meeting such lively people this weekend. But there are other attractions, too. I can personally confirm many Louisiana stereotypes: on the road to Bunkie, I counted only three other cars (that takes into account both directions of traffic); after about 30 minutes of driving on the road to Bunkie, I could hardly see out of my windshield for the vast number of bugs that were splattered across it; and I played a rather hectic game of slalom with the random possoms and turtles foolishly crossing the road from one side of the swamp to the other. It was all overwhelmingly "redneck." Yet there is a remarkable beauty as well - only in the field at TBS have I seen so many stars, or seen them so clearly, for example. And the people make a big difference to my perception of the place.

It is easy for me especially to fall into the Pathetic Fallacy when thinking and writing about these places. In my memory they are closely associated with emotions, which I end up associating in turn with the place itself. There is a kind of thick heaviness about the south now, that lingers in the humid air and manifiests in the choking, overgrown boughs. It lends a kind of carefree anonymity, as if each day bore no witness to the last, as if each event were cloaked or hidden or reduced by the solitude and density. By contrast, it seemed to emphasize the human events. I know what Evelyn Waugh meant when he spoke of Oxford: "It was this cloistral hush which gave our laugher its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamor." It is admittedly a far cry from the clearness and freshness of the northwest - but it can be seductive.

I get the strong sense that the trials and opportunities of my military lifestyle - particularly in seeing different areas of the country - is necessary to my continued growth and maturity. My discoveries about places, with their rich complexity of landscape and people, are central to my experience. Spending time on the military base with my nose buried in a textbook temporarily removed me from this kind of activity. But it was going on all the time, I think - I noticed suddenly the rare glory of Pensacola evenings on the beach; it carried all the impact of a conversion. In that sense my brief weekend break between API and Primary was just the vacation I needed.

Goodbyes, Graduation, and Christmas

I am getting ready to leave TBS, and much has happened in the past week and a half. We are closing out our training here, finishing some boring administrative classes and attending a lot of "mandatory fun." It started last Tuesday when we all packed ourselves into white school buses for the four-hour trip to Gettysburg, PA, to study the battlefield and enjoy the hospitality of Corporal Seamus. CPL Seamus is an institution at TBS: a former marine who got out as a corporal and proceeded both to make millions of dollars and become the mayor of Gettysburg. Of all his accomplishments, he is most proud of being a Marine, and every company that comes to TBS goes to his house one night for "mandatory fun" involving 10 kegs of beer, a wall of marine memorabilia, and either 30 feet of hoagies (what we got) or steaks (a summer thing). The battlefield tour was interesting, but dampened by the thick Fog hovering about 3 feet off the ground; the night at CPL Seamus' around the three bonfires was very enjoyable. If only the whole Program of Instruction were like this.

Well, maybe not. I miss the field, and am sad that I won't be going back (at least, not for a while). It is dirty and hard out there, and often the weather is either too cold, too wet, or too hot for comfort. The equipment you take, designed to protect you or help you kill others, seems also made for your discomfort. And there is no rest: you are always digging a trench, or moving (again!) to a new location, or cleaning your rifle, or planning an attack, or actually attacking. But despite the stress and discomfort, you tend to discover the best in people. It doesn't happen very noticeably, because everyone is bad-tempered due to lack of sleep and other factors--all of which can bring out the worst aspects of personality, too. But a kind of unspoken recognition develops among us, of each person's individual contributions and efforts. I liked these people; I had grown alongside of them, seen their worst, and learned to rely on them in spite of it all.

Our Gettysburg trip spilled over to Wednesday, and we got out early that day. Thursday we had more ennervating classes (including a very informative one about how young marines should leave their affairs in order before they deploy - wills, powers of attorney, setting up a bill pay system, etc.), and then had the afternoon off to prepare for Mess Night. To the uninitiated, Mess Night may seem like a funny tradition. It is a formal military event where we honor our warrior spirit and those who came before us by dining together, making speeches in their honor, and then making fun of each other. It is supposed to be convivial (despite the formal setting) and always accompanied by heavy drinking and the smoking of cigars. On of my platoon-mates entertained everyone by recounting a regrettable statement I made to the company during a safety brief. Usually one is "punished" for their amusing transgressions by paying a fine, but I managed to get out of it by a timely application of wit. No, seriously. I even turned the matter of a fine back on my accusor--which entertained the mess even more, though I think it fair to say that the humor of the situation was heighted due to the beer we had drunk. It was a good time, although it rapidly deteriorated at 0600 the morning after when we woke for PT. There is nothing so miserable than trying to exercise with a hangover. But sanctioned hazing is the Marine Corps way.

The following weekend was exciting and nostalgic at the same time. Friday night I went DC and saw a movie and a bar with an old ND friend. We didn't know each other very well at school (he was the room-mate of a ROTC buddy of mine), but now are becoming close friends. Saturday night I attended a Christmas party at the apartment of a different Notre Dame friend, and spend the night in the District. Sunday, I woke up and visited with my cousin, then spent the afternoon in Georgetown back with my ND friends. We ended up going out to dinner there before I drove back to Quantico. This weekend was meant to be a farewell to this part of the world, but it was tinged with new friendships (and stronger old ones).

And now I am nearly ready to leave. I write this in what has become suddenly a very Spartan (or rather, very much MORE Spartan) environment. My poor little fuel-efficient Honda is packed full and riding slightly low on the back axle, and my desk is bare except for this computer, an as-yet-unsmoked celebratory cigar, and a cup of water. I have one blanket, one pillow, one set of cammies, the clothes I am wearing, and one last piece of luggage (which will house this computer and my toiletries when I finish needing them tomorrow morning). My room-mate is playing angst-ridden hard alternative rock out of his computer at a low volume, and the air smells of dust and order-in pizza. It is finally my last night at TBS.

We graduated today in a very military and mostly forgettable ceremony. Our guest of honor, a two-star general, delivered mildly amusing, somewhat poignant, and advice-filled remarks, we walked across the stage one by one, and we were done. The efficiency of the ceremony is probably indicative of TBS as a whole - when something needs to be done, we are trained simply to do it immediately and as best as we can. I do not want to give the impression that the ceremony was unnecessary - it meant a lot to the family members who were there. But I think all my comrades shared my impatience: we are ready to move on to our real jobs in the Marine Corps, and tend to regard such recognition as irrelevant.

Though I am not very sad to leave this place - because I never enjoyed it very much and because I am looking forward to Pensacola, where I will be rejoining college room-mates and living on the beach - I nevertheless have happy memories of my time here, mostly of struggling beside my peers, accomplishing things I didn't know I could, and simply spending time outside. Though I have much to look forward to, I sense I will miss this place later on. But for now my thoughts are occupied with the 12-hour drive ahead of me. I am ready to leave.

It feels like it's been a long journey. Though only seven months have passed since my graduation, college seems a far in the past. TBS has been busy; I feel like I've learned a lot. In a way, I think I'm fortunate that the dates worked out the way they did: it feels natural to turn towards Christmas at the end of this training. The holidays were out-of-place at TBS; the lone Christmas tree in our HQ building looks pathetic and artificial. Christmas time, when I finally enter it in the Seattle Airport, will be most welcome. Then I can finally (and pleasantly!) think on my gifts to give, my favorite old traditional Christmas carols, and the holiday spirit.

The Home Stretch

So we finished out final FEX the week before last, and lost that weekend to an Urban Patrolling exercise. That is extremely frustrating, because our weekends are very important to us (I will shortly go into more detail about that). The exercise took place on the FBI range (which is on Quantico Marine Base), so it had to be done on the weekend, and it was actually really fun. There were role-players and surprise attacks, and we had several missions to accomplish. It is sobering to realize how fertile the urban environment is for ambushes: every squad on the course suffered casualties. The key to success is communication and initiative. During one scenario nearly one-third of my squad was killed because they didn't move when they were supposed to and got hit by a grenade. I just can't understand how the stereotype of the "dumb infantryman" developed, since all types of fighting comes down to fundamental discipline and intelligence.

We kicked the following week (last week) into high gear with a 15 mile hike. It is far more difficult to cover that distance on your feet than it is in the car, which may sound obvious but is well worth saying anyway. Especially when carrying about 80 pounds. It really is a culminating exercise to the program of instruction here, a test of mental and physical discipline. And for that reason, it was worth it. Nobody in my company fell out of the hike, which is good, especially because its completion is a TBS graduation requirement. It left me rather broken, with sore feet and aching shins and grinding knees, but most of those symptoms have disappeared.

Following the hike I went on Thanksgiving leave. I had a mild adventure finding my way to DC for my flight out Thursday morning, especially as the airport parking lots were full and the taxi dispatchers were booked through 6 PM Thursday night, but it worked out. A good friend allowed me to drive up to his place at 4 AM on Thanksgiving (which took a while because the inner loop of the beltway was closed due to an accident), cooked me breakfast, and got me to the airport in time to catch my 7:30 flight. It certainly gave me one more thing to be thankful for.

Speaking of which, I am certainly thankful that TBS is almost over. Last Thursday, we finished our last written test, proceeded through weapon turn-in and gear turn-in, and took our final Physical Fitness Test (PFT). The completion of these events marks the end of the graded portion of TBS, leaving only final classes, out-processing and celebrations to come (such as our Mess Night, during which Marines traditionally feast, become inebriated, and lampoon each other with stories of foolery drawn from recent memory). But because we are in Delta Company, there will probably be more hardship before I get out. We have distinguished ourselves from other training companies by adopting a much more rigorous schedule (we have squeezed more field time, PT, and general events into our six-month allotment of time than Charlie company did before us, or than Echo and Foxtrot are doing right now). The reason for this is our commanding officer, who is as hardcore an Infantry Marine as any I have ever met. We say that it can always get worse for Delta Company.

Currently, however, the "worse" has taken the form of excruciatingly boring classes and "mandatory fun" in the form of career nights, where Marines from different occupational specialties come to answer our questions about the field we'll be going to when we leave. That's the excuse at least - what really happens is that Marine Officers far superior to us in rank get wildly drunk, reminisce, and then need our assistance into cabs at the end of the night. The week was capped off by hours and hours of weapons-cleaning time, as we readied our issued rifles for the next class. After that, we finally had a weekend...but even then it wasn't all our own.

As I mentioned earlier, weekends are among the most important aspects of life at TBS, since we get a precious free time and a chance to rest our bodies from things like FEXs and 15-mile hikes. Though this weekend started early, we had to spend the first part of it in "mandatory fun" with our platoons. Friday night my platoon had a little social gathering at an adult arcade (and by adult I mean "for adults, not children") called Dave & Busters. It is the kind of place with no windows, a nice-ish restaurant and bar, and loads of bar games like pool and shuffleboard mixed in with some pretty exciting arcade video games. It was a little strange nice to see the entire Platoon in civilian clothes - it added hitherto unknown elements of their personality to my perceptions of them. One guy was dressed kind of fruity, so we teased him pretty hard. But it was nice. I ended up staying a couple of hours after lunch playing shuffleboard and exhausting myself with a very realistic boxing game from which I am still sore (and before you laugh at me for being sore from a video game, let me explain to you carefully that in order to participate, you actually had to shadow-box with giant heavy computer-mitts that registered your character on the screen).

Now I particularly cherish weekends because I can get away from TBS and the TBS mentality. "Mandatory fun" is very much a product of the TBS mentality, so though I usually have no problem hanging out with my comrades, this time I couldn't wait to leave, and as soon as I could continued into DC to meet an old college friend of mine. We met up with two girl friends of his at a bar next to the Catholic University of America and launched without apparent effort into a deeply theological conversation about Catholic morality. I really enjoy talking about that kind of thing; in fact my major in college spent a good deal of time on those kinds of issues. It was the kind of conversation that is totally self-sustaining, comfortable, and interesting. It made for a very pleasant night. The next morning my friend and I toured the National Shrine and went to mass there.

The National Shrine is a beautiful and striking place. It is built and decorated in the Byzantine style, with a great upper church and many smaller chapels (each unique), and a complete lower church in the crypt. It also provides constant confession and mass. Unlike many similar churches/cathedrals/basilicas I have seen in Europe and elsewhere, the inscriptions in the stained-glass windows or carved into the facades are in English. That feature made the biggest impression on me: somehow this church seemed uniquely American, in addition to being Catholic. Since the Catholic religion has been centered in western Europe for so long, and is often associated with European countries (like France, Spain, and Italy), I almost feel that I step momentarily out of the United States when I go to church; the concerns of my day-to-day American life seem distant from my religious concerns. I don't mean that I stop being Catholic in general society or anything, it's simply a matter of perception. Even at Notre Dame, arguably the preeminent and most unabashedly Catholic institution in this country, the religious atmosphere on campus sort of excludes accepted social norms. But something about the composition and character of the Shrine, particularly those English inscriptions, seemed particularly American. The effect is validation: a sense that my religion and my American citizenship are intrinsically reconcilable. I doubt such a consideration would ever normally occur to me, though there is no doubt that the Catholic church calls all of its members to be good citizens and to support their country ("repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God," Matthew 22:21). Like I said, it's just a matter of perception. Nevertheless, it is easy to divorce religion from everyday life; especially so in the United States where the official division of church and state is so clear. The Shrine itself made Catholicism more immediate to me as an American.

That night I met up with more Notre Dame friends in an Irish pub in Arlington - including the one who so generously helped me home this recent Thanksgiving. The night was infused with nostalgia--the approaching end of TBS meant I had only a few more weekends with them. It was satisfying beyond measure to be there: drinking together, our thoughts and shared memories drifting between us like our cigarette smoke. As I made the drive back to TBS the next morning, I reflected on how nicely things were wrapping up for this part of my life. I am proud of my training and accomplishments at TBS, and I feel lucky to have found such a great town and such good friends as I have in Washington, DC. In many ways, I've done much better than I thought.

Vigil with the Stars

"Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness,
Close-bosom friend of the maturing sun..."

These lines of Keats, from an ode to autumn, came to mind this evening as I strolled home from the survival pool. The light was fading and the seasonal fog was forming (as it alway does now around nightfall, to remain until mid-morning tomorrow). The time of day and my recent exertions in the pool cause in me a pleasant, sleepily inspired mood, which is well expressed by the lines of the poet. The sun is certainly mature these days, pale and low on the sky. The mist comes and goes comfortingly, offering a pleasant sense of isolation from a sleeping world. There is a signature beauty about in these quiet fading days of fall.

I have been afflicted with melancholy these last few weeks. The passing of high summer light and color, the imminent end of TBS, worries about my next step (which is still a mystery); these things are suppressive. I don't think the mood ever caused me to lose sight of the so-called "finer" things in life, but I couldn't seem to break out of my mood enough to appreciate them. Now I am free, and I think I know why. But more about that in a bit.

I am fascinated and drawn this world in limbo between fall and winter. Trees, solitary in their emerging nakedness, still bravely cling to the remainder of their earth-colored leaves. The clear sky looks thin and fragile between the naked branches. The stars at night are stunning and unbelievably clear - I saw my zodiacal sign for the first time ever last week. I am a Scorpio, which is the beast that jealous Apollo sent to kill the great hunter Orion, who had attracted the attention of the god's sister Artemis. And sure enough, a diamond-bright scorpion stalked the deep night sky in trail of tall Orion. The woods are cold and quiet, introducing a profound solitude not present the torrid, lively summer months. Perhaps for this reason, my imagination has been running down the paths of reflection and fancy, especially when in the field.

Training reached a "culminating point" last week in the form of Field EXercise (FEX) 4. It was a disappointment. In order to recreate the situation of Marines currently abroad, we engaged in Stability And Stabilization Operations (SASO) at simulated middle-eastern town. Operating in six shifts, we alternated between defense of our position, patrolling, and duty as the "Quick Reaction Force," which we called the QRF. The role-players at the town engineered many crises, and our command element required many patrols, so I spent two-thirds of my time on my feet, as often as not with the Radio on my back. The only "down time" we got was during our spells on defense - but they only lasted four hours apiece and required wakefulness and attention. The temperature hovered around 30 degrees during the day and got much colder at night. I ended up with maybe nine or so hours of sleep all week, and four or five meals total. Nothing makes you suffer quite like being cold, tired and hungry. But I saw the stars.

They were brilliant that week. I saw them more clearly than ever before. The moon, bright in the thin wintry air, set early each night. We were not allowed artificial lights except in special cases, so the stars, prominently, were the only source of light. In the cold, sleepless watches of the night they kept a remote and crystalline vigil; to a life-long city dweller like me it was breathtaking.

That singular experience always returns to me in the quiet times between our activities. This weekend will be short for us since Sunday is scheduled for Urban Patrolling on the FBI Campus. As my mother protested, they don't even give us a day off. But it is cathartic in a way, because it induces a kind of relaxation that eludes me when idle. So after a full day, and remedial swim training (required because the original training was cancelled due to lightning strikes), I walked out of the pool building much lighter in mood and greeted an autumn world covered and sinking to sleep. So I am back where I started. And it is a symptom of all this work and strain that I can enjoy childlike pleasures like the onset of autumn or a particularly beautiful night.

Birthday ball and Road Trip

As you may or may not know, the 10th of November is the birthday of the Marine Corps. Since 1921, every Marine in the world has celebrated that date. Usually this is done by lavish ball, but for Marines in the field (or Iraq) it means simply a special meal of an ordinary MRE. No matter where a Marine is, this date we commemorate our many years of professionalism, warfighting excellence, and esprit de corps. That isn't merely a tag line; it is the truth. I use those words in seriously. Though the celebration doesn't always take place exactly on the 10th, it always includes a reading of the Commandant Lejeune's original birthday message, a reading of the present Commandant's message, and a cake-cutting ceremony where the honors are done by an officer sword, the the first two pieces cut are given to the oldest and youngest Marine present, with the the oldest passing the first slice to the youngest to symbolize the passing of tradition. Our Ball was held at the Richmond Marriott, and it was a special night. Our guest of honor was Colonel Regan, who (with two Navy Crosses) is one of the most decorated Marines alive today, and great festivities. We finished the celebrating with a trip to the bars in our uniforms. It was exceptionally good to be a Marine.

The week that followed was short and painful. Because we receive 96 hours of liberty for most federal holidays, we were scheduled to end our week Wednesday at noon. However, we had the two largest tests of the curriculum on Tuesday and Wednesday, and many clases to prepare us for our "war" coming up next week. Evidently the "war" is quite a realistic - there will be role-players simulating angry mobs, families, small children, news crews, and (obviously) fanatical insurgents. We us MILES gear, which is a high-quality laser-tag system that will "kill" an opponent if you correctly sight in on him or her with your rifle and pull the trigger, so the combat is realistic. It sounds very exciting, though (as usual) there will be little food and sleep. Oh well. Bring on the suffering. It makes me a better warrior.

But now I sit writing to you from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, cosily nestling up to beloved academia and reminiscing. I just attended a Shakespeare class with an old high school friend (who attends this university), which re-fired my desire to explore the rightness, wrongness, and purpose of humanity at large. The whole point of college, as I saw it, was to determine one's future, and not in the vocational sense (which is the epidemic cheapening of our higher education system) but rather the moral sense. How do I go about becoming a good and happy person? How can I be good and happy throughout my life? Perhaps the insight of Shakespeare, Aristotle, and Keats might help.

I drove from Quantico to Charlottesville on Wednesday to visit the University of Virginia, purposely avoiding the interstates to travel on the less travelled and more scenic US Highway system. In a breathless swirl of colored leaves, I discovered the Appalachian Mountain and their foothills, a dramatic and steeply rolling hills country covered with forests still unfolding the climax of autumn. The landscape was patched with horse pasture and tended fields, and occasionally I would pass through a small picturesque town.

The University of Virginia has a pretty campus. The purpose of the visit, though, was to vist a college friend doing grad school work there. It was good to touch base with her and hear what it's like to pursue academic studies, instead of suffering through field exercises every other week. We went to dinner, then the next day I continued into North Carolina.

This was my first exposure to the south: the near-indecipherable accents spoken here, the casual omnipresent politeness (there was even a sign welcoming me to Durham which had a large orange addition asking me to "Pardon the Construction"), the coverage of Nascar on FM radio. But the charm was undeniable, especially at UNC. I really noticed how friendly people were when I went out with the other college kids. It just looked like everyone was having so much fun. I mean, people were friendly at Notre Dame, but they didn't seek to include their bar neighbors in whatever conversation they were having. And the weather was great.

It was really good to see these friends, too. Sometimes the best form of relaxation is merely stepping out of current life with some friends, and enjoying new places and old memories. That wasn't exactly the purpose of this weekend especially after the Birthday Ball and my residual Marine glow. And though their results seem mutually exclusive, together they were just what I needed. And now I am ready for our upcoming war.

Lessons of Aggression

So the week before last was a "Classroom Week." We endured many long classes about Urban Combat, called "MOUT" (Military Operations in Urban Terrain), and the skills associated with it. We also had a "Junk on the Bunk" inspection (JOB), which means that you must display all (and I mean all) issued/required gear on your bunk in a clean, serviceable manner to prove that your gear is combat effective. It also is a way of measuring our discipline: our gear must, in addition to being serviceable, also be tidy and presentable. So we all spent several long nights scrubbing our gear outside under the hoses and letting them dry. Overall a rather irritating week.

The following week (last week) we spent at the MOUT facility, a three block square "city" constructed of concrete cinder-blocks. To get there, we hiked 12 miles with a signficantly heavier pack than we usually do, which pretty much destroyed the company. I, like many, ended up with the extra weight that other Marines had to shed to keep up - the ironic reward of hacking the pace. Fortunately, we got some rest that evening: we built a fire, barbecued some burgers and listened to a leadership discussion by a battalion commander who had been to Iraq twice. The next day we learned about, and conducted, several convoys, fighting off ambushes by simulated insurgents several times. Wednesday we practiced room clearing, tactical movement through urban terrain, and urban squad operations. Yesterday we conducted a platoon attack on several buildings, and today we practiced running vehicle checkpoints.

This was all very much more interesting than the previous squad and platoon attacks for several reasons. The first is that we used simunitions, which are essentially paint-balls fired from an M16. They mark you when they strike you, and they sting. They add a realistic element to the combat exercise, because you know when you've been hit and you begin to really think about things like cover and concealment. Furthermore, our aggressors, the CIs (Combat Instructors), are enlisted infantry marines with combat experience who LOVE to shoot at officers. They were a talented and motivated foe.

The most important lesson of the week was the aggression necessary in MOUT. They say that "Inside a building is dangerous, outside is lethal." Since every street or terrace is overlooked by windows and doorways from adjacent buildings, you are most exposed outside. Therefore, you sprint, and I mean sprint, from building to building, slamming into walls and rolling off, diving into windows and doors, and generally being aggressive and motivated and beating yourself up in the process (which is what a bunch of twenty-something males want to do anyway). It is ridiculously fun. Inside is even better: You are liable to be fired upon from corners of the room, from down stairs, from trapdoors above. It is incredibly manpower-intensive because the nature of buildings exponentially magnifies the amount of usable space and obstacles the enemy can use to fight. For that reason, you clear hallways and rooms in teams of two or more, stacking up in a column outside the door in a tight column, then you burst into the room together with guns blazing, hoping your combined firepower overwhelms the enemy. It makes me excited just thinking about it. Often we would suppress the room with a grenade (we used practice grenades which sound like the real thing but don't spread shrapnel) before busting in. And this goes on (exhaustingly) from room to room to room, in every building of the city.

This particular FEX had another benefit: Hot Chow every night. Hot Chow is a magnificent event where they truck out cases of steaming food to serve you an entire dinner, cafeteria-style, which is incredible after days of MREs. We also got sufficient sleep, for the first time on a FEX: we went to bed shortly after it got dark (7:30 PM) and woke up before 6 AM. It all felt very healthy, in fact. The only bad thing about this recent FEX was the cold rain we had all Thursday, and the cold all day Friday. It was pretty comfortable otherwise.

And that is all I have for you. It's a short post for two weeks' worth of events. And I have little in the way of reflection. I am melancholy at heart, as I always am when Autumn gives way to winter. It is still several weeks until the happier times of snow and holidays. But I continue to try to adapt along this journey, and hopefully come ever closer to contentment.

Wetness, coldness, war, and the M240G

When you go into the field here at TBS (and I assume anywhere else in the Marine Corps), you must reconstruct time and reality. It is a monumental task. Over the past week, my company conducted FEX III, the most war-like of our evolutions. I slept only 14 hours; the other 102 I was conducting exercises. Probably like any experience of suffering and privation, a FEX exposes oneself in a way that all the little luxuries of society (like beds and showers) prevent. Since part of the learning experience of a FEX is experiencing the kind of privation that happens in combat situations, there is neither time for relaxation nor time fore eating built in. We must eat when we can and often go without food for long hours. What makes this especially demanding is the fact that everything about the FEX requires focus and discipline, from the long midnight security watches to the act of sneaking up on enemy positions for reconnaisance.

We spent four full days in the field, plus a morning dedicated to leaving. Monday we were helicoptered in and set up a defense, which we maintained until Wednesday morning. On Wednesday, we conducted a Movement to Contact, a platoon daylight attack, and a night ambush. On Thursday, we conducted a night attack. Each evening we manned LP/OPs (Listening Post/Observation Post), stood Radio Watch (listened to the Radio to see if higher called us), and kept a man posted on every Squad Automatic Weapon for security. In the daytime we conducted patrols, Leader's Recon, and held strong points. We engaged in combat with our peers, captured POWs, and suffered casualties.

Although the first day was clear, the rest of the week proceeded under steady, and it steadily got colder. We slept in wet sleeping bags (when we had time), we woke up frigidly at all hours in wet clothes, we lay prone in ice-cold water, we sat in chest-deep fighting positions that slowly filled with mud. I cannot remember being warm, although many times I achieved a sort of comfort simple from moving around. Yet this kind of discomfort the grueling pace of our activities fostered pride and cameraderie during and after the FEX.

The easiest way to explain this week is to say that the level of intensity pushed well past the point where I previously would have called it quits. Despite the cold and wet, I am proud to say that we went about our business in a professional manner. During movement to contact, which is a method of clearing terrain of enemy, we hiked through thick woodland at a fast pace with full load (70-100 lbs) on our backs, diverting units as needed to engage whatever enemy we encountered. It requires discipline to drop packs in precise order under fire, to engage the enemy with aggression, and then quickly retrieve the packs and run to rejoin the formation. It requires discipline to know what exactly your job is each time an engagement occurs. And it requires discipline to continue onward without food, without sleep, while cold and wet. But we did it. During the night attack, my squad and I crept to within 60 meters of enemy entrenchments without being detected, achieved surprise, and suppressed them with fire so our comrades could assault through. During the night ambush, we took down an order in driving rain, crept through dense underbrush in 0% illumination without the aid of lights or NVGs, ambushed a convoy, raided the trucks, and transported our spoils back in the same manner, while once resisting a counterattack by the enemy. Sitting down at my desk to write about it, I almost can't believe all we accomplished, despite having been there myself. The memory thrills me.

We did it. We accomplished the mission. In spite of physical hardship. And that is the greatest feeling in the world. My captain once told our platoon, "mental and physical toughness will take you a long way," and he was right. It is the mental and physical toughness that my platoon showed that enabled us to do our jobs so well despite the poor conditions and the intelligent, highly enemy. We were in the middle of war-like conditions, and we performed. Moreover, the actions of my Platoon enabled me to take part. I won't lie: every single one of us was discouraged and thinking of quitting at one point during the week. But we all covererd for each other and inspired each other (and sometimes had to kick each other in the ass to get moving). We were greater than the sum of our parts, and that sustained us. That made suffering seem incidental, except as an excuse to complain.

A few characteristically reflective moments stand out for me, the first being the helicopter ride in. The helicopter is an amazing machine. When you get in, and the engines wind up, it feels like there is no way the rotor can lift the aircraft. You seem to hear each individual rotor blade hitting the air as the aircraft struggles to lift off. But in the air, it is different - we made some turns so sharply that I could literally look straight down to the earth through the windows on the opposite side of the fuselage from where I was seated. Exhilarating? absolutely.

Another, oddly, was firing the machine gun. I may have mentioned already that I carried the M240G medium machine gun through the night attack, which included about 3 km of hiking to various control points (again, through dense forest), 1600 meters of creeping through woodland in the dark to get in position, and one glorious minute of firing. In fact, though I hated the M240G while hiking it, it fires so beautifully that I forgave it everything during the attack. I felt in that moment like I would never love a girl as much as I loved that weapon. It fires 7.62mm (.30 calibre) high-powered rifle rounds, which makes a lot more more noise than the smaller caliber M16 and SAWs (5.56mm/.2229 cal). It also a more physical weapon, with a powerful recoil. And it has a higher rate of fire and great reliability. I felt like Rambo. It was wonderful: the first burst I fired was supposed to be 6-8 rounds, but it ended up being closer to 20, because it felt so good to be pulling the trigger. I don't think I will ever forget the sight of that machine gun eating its chain of ammunition, or the feel of its buttstock slamming my shoulder, or the brightness of its muzzle flashes. It was (and I don't use this word lightly) almost orgasmic.

Now, it all is a pleasant memory. I am filled with more food than I ever thought possible to eat, and enjoying the inordinate warmth of my barracks room. My warm, dry rack is calling. I am off to what I am sure will be a great night's sleep...which in this moment is all I want in the world.

Pure Autumn

Week 16 has passed here at TBS. It contained two of the more important graded events of the course, the Endurance Course (E-Course) on Friday and the Land Navigation Final today (Saturday). Both events were difficult, but I passed each with high scores. I have tonight and Sunday to recover, and prepare for FEX III, which kicks off on Monday. It will be our hardest exercise of TBS. Welcome to the Infantry.

The E-Course is designed to test an officer's physical stamina and ability in a simulated combat environment. It a series of three events ran in sequence: the Obstacle Course (O-Course), Echo Trail, and the Stamina Course. The O-Course is about 300 meters of low and high obstacles that require climbing over, ducking under, and vaulting. It is a test of upper body strength and upper body stamina. It is completed by climbing a 30-ft rope. Echo Trail is about 2.5 miles, and travels relentless over (it seems) every hill in Quantico. The Stamina course is much like Echo Trail, though it is about 3 miles long and interspersed with higher obstacles every several hundred yards, including a 20-foot Jacob's ladder and a hundred-yard low-crawl course under barbed wire. With the exception of the O-Course, we must perform the whole thing with about 35 lbs of gear and a rifle. If you complete it in 60 minutes or less, you "max" it (get the highest possible score), if you take over 80 minutes, you fail. Most Marines are gasping for breath by the finish of the O-Course, only two minutes into the event...and the following 6 miles or so bring you to the edge of your endurance. Physically, it is the hardest thing I have ever done.

Final Land Nav is also strenuous, but in a different way. You are given seven hours to complete, and most people require that. In the morning, you are released into this 30-square kilometer training area, and you must be back at a pick-up spot (on the perimeter of the area) by a set time that afternoon, or you are disqualified. There are ten boxes for you to find with your compass and your map, each one (of course) worth 10% of your grade. These boxes, as before, are little red metal ammunition boxes mounted on posts, with numbers painted on them (so you can identify which ones you found). Despite their color they are hard to see - you have to get within 50 yards or so before they are visible. They are often a kilometer or more away from each other, and the terrain is very hilly, so a lot of hiking is involved. My route today took me over 10,000 meters, which does not account for the distance I covered actually searching for boxes once I found their respective general locations. A handy conversion website puts that at about 6.2 miles, which is no small distance, especially off roads and over hills. However, despite the pressure to pass and the constant hiking, I found the experience breathtaking.

Though I was superficially concerned with finding my assigned boxes (and I found all of them), I feel like I spent that time wandering awestruck in uninterrupted forest amid the climactic and glorious throes of autumn. I started the day in a twilit wood, its pale-gold leaves faintly luminous in the promise of sunrise. I have no memory of mid-day, for this late in the season the afternoon seems to begin almost immediately, so low through the sky strides the sun. Areas of mostly bare scrub bespoke the coming winter, and the occasional copse still bearing rich greenery recalled the fading summer. At some point I ate lunch at the intersection of two creeks, the veiled land rising in autumn colors about me, and as I did so it started to rain. It was a hurried, spitting, autumn rain, released in fitful bursts from the fast-scudding clouds above. The later hours of the afternoon were dominated by the slanting sunlight dodging down sporadically between clouds. As I emerged from the woods at last, I was struck by fierce slanting sunlight emanating from a rich blue sky.

How can I describe the leaves? Though most lay dead on the ground, still many of those defiantly blazed forth deep russet and red. I crunched steadily through this wreck of foliage, my breath misting before me and everything in sight seeming fragile and aflame. The approaching death of winter carried an air of tragedy, as though it were possible to be sad among such beauty, but it seemed a natural contradiction. The light, the leaves, the cool clear air, and the solitude meld into one memory of glory. It feels as though I spent today wandering in a dream.

Of all victims of the Pathetic Fallacy, I am the most willing and gullible. I am often struck by how alive the world seems at times; not so much in an independent existance, but such that it is actively interacting with me. There seems a great communication at work, mediated by God: I feel strongly that I learned something over the course of the day, nothing perhaps that can be tidily comprehended or put down in writing, but something that manifests deeper than my intellect. It will germinate slowly, no doubt, unheeded by my conscious mind, for now I must focus on other things like the upcoming FEX and my required preparations for it. Yet because of my journey today, I bend to work with a lighter heart. I am refreshed.

Failure and learning

I write this post in the absolute center of all civilization: The Airport. How different from the schedule-dominated life of the Marine Corps; how different from the mud and sweat of field exercises! The transition is not so much difficult - it is enjoyable to sit among a variety of people, casually listening to music from my headphones - but ironic. It is hard to take this life seriously after having spent time in the field. If I stop to consider, I am surprised that a bunch of 18-24 year old young adults can switch so easily from discipline, effort, and alertness of Marine training to the superficial complexity and savvy of a trend-driven society. It’s like being bipolar, but more useful. I kind of like it. It has a romantic tinge to it.

Last week was a tough one. We completed our 10-mile forced march (in the rain, which is hard on both one’s feet and one’s motivation) as well as FEX II, an acronym that stands for Field EXercise II. This was our first chance to lead and conduct platoon-level operations, with the added concepts of automatic weapons, support-by-fire positions, obstacle plans, offensive tactics (like envelopment), and prepared defensive positions. Like everything else involved in the infantry, it is mentally very challenging. How should you divide your manpower? How should you weight your main effort, or main attack? How can you best use your support-by-fire assets? What is your engineering/obstacle plan? What codes and signals do you use to coordinate the movement of 40-odd people through thick underbrush without bunching your attack up and risking friendly-fire casualties? How do you motivate everybody to dig waist-deep into rock-hard soil? We spent those two days experimenting with different kinds of attacks, trying to properly position grenade launchers and machine guns, attempting to set up barbed-wire obstacles, and hacking ourselves into defensive positions. At night, we sat up behind our machine-guns, alert for attacks. We didn't sleep. And we struggled to succeed.

I hope I have convinced you that the stereotype of a "dumb grunt" is completely untrue. Besides the grueling physical activity required, infantry operations require a firm grasp of technical data (such as weapon ranges and effects, ideal obstacle configurations, and fire support concepts) as well as creativity to make a plan that uses the assets available in a cohesive, mutually-supporting manner. Only thus is the mission accomplished correctly, which is to say as expeditiously as possible, with the fewest lives lost. It is one of the most mentally difficult things I have ever done - it ranks up there with Plato, Kant, and very abstract Theology. And speaking of lives lost, there is an additional wrinkle: if you are "dumb" and make a mistake, your people die, and it is your fault. Then you should go to jail, because their lives were your responsiblity. And that makes the exercise even harder. The infantry is at least every bit as intellectually demanding and emotionally stressful as civilian jobs. “Dumb grunt” is a grossly ironic title.

We didn’t do very well this week, and that's what made it so rough. No matter what "bad things" happen out there - if you cut your hands, bash your face against your rifle, twist your ankle, and develop a nasty gastrointestinal disorder - if your operations are successful and your mission accomplished, then you have a great time. If, on the other hand, everything goes right except your attacks (or your defense), then the field sucks. I have thus learned that personal comfort is perhaps the least important thing about Field Ops. I would trade even my own health and wholeness for little more success. But hopefully by WFEX III, perhaps we will be more combat-effective.

For now, though, we got a good lecture on our mistakes and attitude (lazy and sullen) from our platoon commander, who imparted this bit of wisdom that I think worth passing on. Always ask yourself these four questions: what am I doing? why am I doing it? what is it good for? and how do I know? If by the answers to these questions you discover you are doing something wrong (like eating chow in the field while everybody else is working hungry), then stop. I firmly believe that most of our personal failings are due to the fact that we make easy, wrong choices instead of more difficult, less pleasant, right choices. It seems so obvious to me now that each wrong choice I make out there renders my team less effective, and in this business of warfighting and killing, that is inexcusable. More generally, though, wrong choices affect my goodness throughout my life. I think that being a good person is the greatest task we have in this life, for it affects our relationships, our success, our health, and most importantly our happiness. And in my platoon commander's angry questions I found a way to do better.

Incidentally, it is very eerie in the field at night. I mentioned earlier our nighttime 7-mile forced march, which took place under a beautiful silvery moon. But though we had similar conditions this past week, the effect was strange and silent as we settled into defensive positions. Stranger still, it got almost imperceptibly darker, and shortly I began to hear the faint sound of rushing water. Everything was so still and alone I remember wondering quite seriously whether I was imagining things or not - the silvery light seemed once so permanent that I literally couldn't believe it was gone, then the rushing water - though I had just noticed it - seemed to have gone on since the beginning of time. If that sounds melodramatic, I promise you it seemed both natural and quite disturbing in the profound solitude of that night. When it finally began to rain, it seemed the strangest thing yet - the whole experience was decidely surreal. It seems even more so now that I am surrounded by the light and structure of civilization.

Between the hike and the FEX this week I feel pretty drained. But I am on my way to a wedding! It is exciting to travel, and I can't wait to see my old friends. A little vacation to normality will (I hope) return me to training next week eager to go back to the field, and do better there...

An Interlude

I am currently in a boring phase of TBS. The classes are dull, the events are difficult and unglamorous, and we haven't really learned anything new in a while. The only really exciting recent event was night land navigation. It is much like day land navigation - spiderwebs, thick underbrush, water hazards, and lots of bugs - only you can't see. So you fall into rivers and small lakes, you trip over logs, and you eat spiders more frequently than normal. That is all very unpleasant. But happily that night beautiful, starry and filled with moonlight, reminding me that though I chiefly joined the Marine Corps to learn discipline and virtue (so they would "make a man out of me"), I find here at TBS I am also getting more spiritual lessons. Due in part to the harsh training environment, I am forced into contact with beauty in ways that normal-life distractions have so far denied me.

An example of this occurred last week, during a day Land Navigation Event. It was six hours long because it involved greater distances and more boxes to find than we had previously seen. I worked under an iron sky, in a soaking, miserable rain. After finding my last box, I had a little time to spare, so I began a relatively leisurely stroll to the Command Post. I was picking my way down a muddy tank trail when suddenly, for no discernable reason, I looked up. There, as if it had materialized out of nowhere, stood a dignified and comely four-point buck, gazing at me curiously from a distance of several meters. Unable to stop myself, I spoke: "You are beautiful." It was a strangely solemn moment. We looked at each other for several still moments before he turned and bounded away with unhurried grace.

That is but one of the moments here in Quantico where I am overwhelmed by beauty. I will leave the barracks at sunset, for instance, and see the sky awash with copper-gold clouds, clear and glimmering. Or I will stop outside after a cell phone call to notice the distinct, intense and luminous array of stars above me. Or I will encounter a buck in the forest, strangely both familiar and majestic. These events gather themselves in my memory as a collage of light and smell and sound, and become a personal retreat from the immediate, rigorous, disciplined, and stressful concerns of military life. They are more than a retreat; they are a backdrop, and provide an overarching spiritual structure to my military experiences. They are necessary leisure, even if they only occur in an eternal instant. Each of them is the separate sensation of something endlessly beautiful running through you, uncapturable and barely observable; the infintessimal point at which you touch the divine.

Beauty, therefore, is not necessarily a property of visible things. "Beauty" describes the effect of things to raise our consciousness to a more metaphysical level. Essentially, a thing is beautiful that offers more clear evidence of God's grace and perfect creation: a person, a painting, a building, a flower, a mountain. I am beginning to understand this, and take hope from it. My journey in the Marine Corps is yielding richer fruit than I could have imagined.

Falling apart and picking up

I write this evening with a sad, tired smile on my face. It has been a hellish week. I am comfortable now, sitting glumly in my favorite little internet cafe, while outside it is raining as it only can in Virginia - heavy, painful drops that turn puddles into rapids and roads into rivers. There are serious tornado warnings for Northern Virginia, including the area I am in; evidently Hurricane Ivan sent us some exciting weather. The savage noise of the rain and all the sounds which accompany it - the frantic whipping of windshield wipers, the wet flop of feet scurrying over pavement, the incessant roar of water cascading off of roofs - leave a feeling of crumbling, as if somehow the world is disintegrating. Every thump my wheels make as I drive leaves me wondering if the air has left the tires, every turn of the wheel seems painfully close to a skid, everytime I step outside I grow more bedraggled and wet.

I finished my tour as Student Company Commander today. As part of our training, we undertake leadership billets within the company for two weeks at a time. These billets require us to take responsibility for our peers and for the training schedule. It means spending a lot of free time coordinating events with various staff members, keeping an exact count of the Marines in the company, and - what is hardest of all - ordering my peers to do things they don't enjoy, like cleaning stairwells. It is fun to be in charge, and fun to deal with the challenges of leadership, but it is also draining - I feel completely exhausted. I am also relieved; now I can focus back on the technical training aspect of TBS.

This past week we continued patrolling exercises. These mean 12-page orders, overlays of pre-planned artillery targets, preliminary "warning orders" to divide the responsibilities among different patrol members, a detailed terrain model, and then finally the exhausting conduct of the patrol itself. Twice. Once during the day, and an abbreviated version during the night which culminates in an ambush. It was also physically demanding, coming as it did on the heels of Land Navigation 4 - by the end of the first patrol, my legs were losing their ability to balance properly and I was panting with every step. It was not only a lesson in patrolling, but also a lesson in endurance.

Yet these kinds of extreme situations are nourishment to me, and I imagine to every Marine. The suffering is the price we pay for all the fun we have: the helicopter insert and extract, the many rounds of ammunition we fire, and the opportunity to simulate actual assaults on our fellow lieutenants. The helicopter ride alone made up for most of the pain. The essential fact, I think is that combat is fun. I suppose that is a shocking thing to write, but under consideration it makes sense. Why is competition (especially in sports) such a universal pleasure? Because humans enjoy fighting, after a fashion. It forces us to strive greatly, to use our bodies and minds to solve puzzles, and (if done correctly) yields us the victory. The stark physical and mental difficulty of planning and conducting a patrol resolves the simple pleasures of doing things well and winning into great clarity. I am beginning to discover how much I love my job.

I realize now, with great satisfaction, that I could complete another six hour land navigation session tomorrow morning at 7. There is one scheduled, as remediation for those who failed the earlier event. Fortunately, I am not in that group. But I know I could do it (as I have for the past two weekends). It seems, after 12 weeks of TBS, we are learning how far our real physical limits are from where we thought they were. Just when we think we have reached the end of our our strength, and we can't walk any more miles or carry any more weight, we simply focus on the ground and do it. It honestly seems like a bonus to have the entire weekend off.

After the recent birth of a baby daughter, which he nearly missed after being in the field with us, my Platoon Commander told us, "the Marine Corps is a big green machine, and it will keep going with you until you jump off or it spits you out in 20 or 30 years. It never stops." This is why people join the Marines: to be part of an endeavor greater than themselves. It is equally well expressed by a 1980s recruiting poster for the Marines, showing a column of vehicles moving down a road, with the headline "The Marines need a few good men...to keep 'em rolling." The Corps takes good men and makes them professional warriors, it executes our nation's policy with military force when necessary, and it does these things without demanding excess money or complaining about tough tasks. The formula for this is a continuous tempo of operations, the basic and universally understood imperative to pick up and keep going even when tired. Recovery will come, but it won't come in luxury - your body will heal in the classroom, and your mind will rest in the field.